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Cascading style sheets, or CSS, is a method of coding web pages that puts your website styling code into a separate page from the design elements on a page. W3C Tech reports 90.6% of websites use some sort of CSS coding on their website, mostly external. You get many benefits from designing your website with CSS coding in mind, from search engine optimization to loading time. Here are the main reasons why you should use CSS for almost every website you design.

Frameworks

If you’re new to the web design world, and you don’t want to use templates, CSS frameworks give you a good middle ground to explore. Blogging via WordPress works best with pre-built CSS frameworks if you’re working with the mobile world in mind. Instead of endlessly testing your website against various mobile devices and browser apps, you know the frameworks have been tested in that environment.

SEO-Friendly Code

When you include styling information within every page of your website, you clutter up the code. When you clutter the code with position and style elements, search engines see that long before they see any of your page’s content. A CSS page moves all of that styling information out of the webpage and into the CSS page. It is then called by the webpage through a single line of code. If you include this code in a shared section across your website, you only have to include it once. Websites using CSS load faster, which is another factor search engines use for ranking.

Formatting

Instead of changing every single webpage one by one when you want to change the look or fix a problem, you only need to change the CSS, without touching any other web pages. When you’re dealing with thousands of pages in a content management system, this saves time and lets you focus on what’s most important: Good content.

Flexibility

Most content management and blog scripts offered at WebHostingBlueBook.com, for example, already incorporate CSS compatibility with their templating systems. For example, WordPress has a web template system that divides various sections of the web page into separate php calls. The CSS file insertion occurs within the header, allowing it to easily be pulled into the rest of the pages. Some templates might use different CSS files for different types of templates. You can use separate CSS files to create a different look for your front page and your blog page.

Consistent Style and Branding

If you add style information by hand in a dozen web pages, you might manage to keep everything the same. However, it’s pretty likely you’re going to run into some issues managing this across a website with hundreds or thousands of pages. A consistent look is essential to keeping your web visitors feeling confident in your site, maintaining a professional image, and building authority. CSS uses the same styling code for every webpage that pulls the file, maintaining the same colors, fonts and styles throughout your site.

What benefits do you think CSS provides? Tell us in the comments.

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